Motorola Photon 4G for Sprint hands on

Sprint announced today the Motorola Photon 4G, an Android 2.3 Gingerbread device that is also an international or world phone. That means you can use the device overseas when you’re traveling for business or pleasure. The Photon 4G also supports Motorola’s Webtop appilcation, which means it will dock with a laptop accessory where you can surf the web and access your phone from the laptop.

The Photon 4G feels pretty nice in the hand. It’s contoured on the back just nicely so it has a pretty natural feel, and it has good weight to it, which I always like in a phone. The screen is nice and vivid, and because it’s a qHD screen, images and text are quite sharp, too. The phone is running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which is great, but it’s also skinned with Motoblur. I’m not the biggest fan of the UI, and I did notice a bit of lag swiping between screens and in opening and closing apps, but I didn’t really have enough time with the device to tell whether it’s going to be a daily usage problem. It’s worth noting that the Photon 4G does have a Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor, so it should have plenty of horsepower, and it also runs on Sprint’s 4G WiMax network.

Sprint didn’t announce a formal launch date, but it did say that it’s coming this summer.